Young couples don’t go to “love hotels” on Valentines Day anymore. In fact, they pretty much don’t go anywhere now, because the youth of China are increasingly checking in as singles. To play e-sports. But they might take their dog with them.
Valentines Day of 2023 in China has been dominated by rise of e-sport hotels and pet hotels, newly-revealed data shows. It all points to the increasing importance of the “singles economy”, as it is being called (单身经济).
While it has been headline news for a while that the Chinese population is now shrinking, a driving factor thereto is the growth in the numbers of people choosing to remain single. And now they have become a more-than-significant economic force.
Numbers coming out of our own Jiangsu for 2022 show a decline in the number of marriages registered in Wuxi, Changzhou, Lianyungang and Yangzhou. In those cities, the average age for marriage is now over 30 years old, reports The Paper.
It’s a massive shift for a country where tradition states a lady should be wed by the time she is 24.
Put it all together and China ended 2022 with in excess of 240 million single people, claims Yangtze Evening News.
It makes them a main force in the consumer market, especially on Valentine’s Day.
According to data released by Ctrip, the rise in bookings for e-sport hotels this year exceeded that for hotels aimed at couples, becoming the hotel category showing the most growth.
For the single people of Generation Z, Valentines Day was a reason to check in to such a hotel and find an e-sport room to play games in groups.
Then there is the “pet economy” (宠物经济) that has also become one of the most promising consumption trends in recent years. Month-on-month bookings for pet hotels over the Valentines-Day period this year were up by more than 70 percent.
As to the factors driving the changing demographics and the habits thereof, the Lianyungang Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau has now gone on the record.
In addition to common speculation, the Bureau cites a change in the concept of marriage among younger generations, a development unthinkable in the China of 10 or 20 years ago.
